Forged(70)

“Weapons down!”

Emma follows the guard. She’s wearing a medical smock over her dress, and her right hand clenches a handgun.

“Which one first?” the Order member asks her.

She brings her gun to his temple. “Neither.”

“But you said . . . I thought . . .”

With her spare hand, Emma pulls a syringe from the pocket of her smock. The needle is buried in the soft flesh of the guard’s neck before he even registers the threat. He frowns, and then his face goes entirely slack a second before he collapses.

Emma turns to us and frees our bound hands. “Crap,” she says, her eyes falling on Sammy. “He looks even worse in person than he did on the cameras. Here.” She shoves a small piece of blood-covered metal into my palm. “His office,” she says. “Use the wrist chip to get there. Then the bookshelf. There’s a false room.”

I notice the bloody bandage on Emma’s arm. She cut her wrist implant out. She cut into her own arm to retrieve this chip.

“Whose office?” I ask, completely baffled.

“Frank’s,” she urges. “I figured it out a while ago, before they planted me in Pine Ridge to wait for you. He’d visit me in the hospitals a lot. I was gifted, he said. Had talent like Harvey. Sometimes his eyes were perfectly human. Other times they weren’t right, like the Forgeries’. I got good at spotting the difference in the glare of operating lights.”

Bree’s eyes drift back to where Frank’s crumpled form sits, and she swears.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Emma continues. “I wanted Frank to trust me, which meant making sure none of you did. I was going to do it myself, two days ago when we got back, but I was worried if I killed him first, the Gen5 would suspect everything; and if I killed the Forgery first, I knew Frank would. One of them was always watching. So I waited.”

“And now?” I ask.

Emma drops beside Sammy and pulls one of his arms behind her neck. “And now Sammy needs medical attention, so you two will have to do it for me.”





THIRTY-FIVE


EMMA’S CHIP GETS US INSIDE and up the necessary stairwells. When Bree and I burst onto Frank’s floor, the few workers present step out of our way without a fight. Something is changing. It’s as if they know Frank’s grip is almost exhausted. They are deciding whose graces they want to be in when the smoke clears.

His office is locked, and this is the one door that doesn’t register Emma’s chip. I throw my shoulder into the door as I twist the knob. Slam my palm against it. “Come on!” Not now. We can’t hit a dead end here.

“Gray!” Bree shoves me aside and aims where the teeth of the latch are hidden within the wood. She fires once, twice, and the locking mechanism gives.

The office is empty.

We walk in with our guns up, scanning the room. Papers lay scattered across the floor. A desk drawer hangs open as though files were grabbed in a hurry.

“Got it,” Bree says. She’s found the section of shelving Emma mentioned, although I can’t imagine how Emma discovered it. Maybe she visited Frank’s office and found it already open, or caught someone in the act of coming or going.

Bree pushes, and the section recedes, then slides behind the rest of the shelves to reveal a second office. The floor is slate gray and dull, and a narrow corridor branches off to the left. A series of surveillance screens hang on the walls, currently showing the square downtown. Without the Forgeries, the fighting is more evenly matched. There are no cushioned chairs in this office, no elaborate drapes or grand glass windows. The only decorative touch is a picture frame propped up beside the lone computer. The woman in the photo looks uncannily familiar, though I can’t remember ever meeting her.

A gunshot deafens me in the tight quarters.

I duck, hands cradling my head. A second blast—or maybe it’s the same bullet—strikes a screen, which crackles and goes dead. Frank darts from behind a large filing cabinet and races down the hallway. I send a bullet after him. It hits his leg. He staggers around a corner, firing blindly back. It is by sheer luck that the bullets hit the wall and not me.

I round the corner only to see him turning another.

“Damn, this place is big. Bree?” I turn. She’s not behind me. “Bree!”

As I backtrack, my lungs seem to shrink. I all but fall into the secondary office. She’s on the floor, leaning against the wall.

I drop to my knees and scramble to her.

“Are you hit?” My hands are on her, checking her face, her torso.

“Just grazed,” she says, wincing as my hands move to her arms. “Right there.”

I pull back. It’s then that I notice the tear on the upper arm of her jacket, the blood. And the fact that her tank is shorter than it used to be. A pale rag, torn from the hem of her shirt, is in her opposite hand. She was trying to secure the material over the wound, slow the bleeding.

“Go,” she says. “I’ll be right on your heels.”

“We stay together.”

“Gray . . .”

“No. Just stop.” I snatch the rag from her and tie it around her bicep. “Good?”

“Good.”

I help her to her feet—she cringes—and we take off down the corridor. It forks and branches often. Frank must be able to access half of Union Central through these hallways.